Education Week annual ranking gives Rhode Island mixed grades

Wednesday

Jan 8, 2014 at 9:41 PM

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Rhode Island gets mixed grades on the quality of its education system, earning good grades in school spending while lagging behind half of the nation on student achievement, a report says.

Linda Borg Journal Staff Writer @lborgprojocom

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Rhode Island gets mixed grades on the quality of its education system, earning good grades in school spending while lagging behind half of the nation on student achievement, according to a national education magazine.

Education Week’s 18th annual edition of Quality Counts offers state scores and letter grades for three key elements: a chance for success index, K-12 achievement and school spending.

Not surprisingly, Massachusetts is ranked first on student achievement, which it has done since the index was introduced in 2008. Rhode Island ranked 27th in this category, well behind the other five New England states. New Hampshire and Vermont were ranked fourth and fifth, respectively.

Among other things, the achievement index looks at math and reading scores, high school graduation rates and Advanced Placement test scores.

Rhode Island earned a D+ in achievement, behind the national average, a C-.

While Rhode Island has shown marked progress in fourth- and eighth-grade scores in both math and language, the state has some of the biggest gaps between low-income and more affluent students, ranking 48 out of 50 states plus the District of Columbia.

Rhode Island Education Commissioner Deborah Gist stressed that for the first time, Rhode Island has exceeded the national average on a test called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly known as the nation’s report card.

“We have reached a milestone on the NAEP,” she said. “The lingering issue, [one] that we still have a huge amount of work to do, is making sure that all students are achieving. Gaps do remain. When we put our strategic plan in place, closing those gaps was among the goals. We have yet to meet them.”

Rhode Island isn’t alone. According to Education Week, most states have struggled to improve the student performance of their poorest students. In fact, between 2003 and 2013, the poverty gap narrowed in only 18 states.

In New England, only New Hampshire narrowed the gap between middle-class and poor students. Even in Massachusetts, the gap between the haves and the have-nots has widened slightly.

Education Week also developed a Chance for Success index that analyzes 13 different indicators, including pre-school enrollment, student performance, adult educational attainment and high school graduate rates, to understand the role education plays in future success.

Rhode Island scored a B-, higher than the national average, a C-, but well below the other New England states.

Still, Rhode Island scored third in the nation on the number of young adults enrolled in a post-secondary education.

Gist said this isn’t enough.

“While it is important that we have students going to college,” she said, “we have to make sure that they are better prepared. Right now, we have too many students who are not prepared for the next steps. They get to college, then they end up quitting.”

Rhode Island, however, scored dead last on the number of children enrolled in kindergarten. Four other New England states also scored near the bottom.

Chris Swanson, the vice president of Editorial Projects in Education for Education Week, acknowledged that the data for kindergarten enrollment was a little mushy.

“We’re not sure we have a satisfactory explanation,” he said. “There are some states that offer universal kindergarten but don’t mandate it. This is an imperfect measure.”

In the third category that Education Week measured, school finance, Rhode Island earned a B, above the national average of C.

The Ocean State ranks first in terms of the percentage of students in districts whose per-pupil spending exceeds the national average of $11,864. Rhode Island’s adjusted per-pupil spending is $14,794, according to Education Week.

Rhode Island, however, is among the lowest-scoring states in terms of the differen-ces in per-pupil spending between the highest- and lowest-spending districts in the state.

In the overall category of school funding, Rhode Island earns a B, higher than the national average, a C. In fact, Rhode Island outscores every New England state but Connecticut on school finance.

Gist said this is an example where the state’s three-year-old school funding formula is beginning to equalize spending differences between poor and more affluent districts.